Transportation

One of the nec­es­sary but con­fus­ing parts of trav­el­ing is fig­ur­ing out the taxi sys­tem in var­i­ous coun­tries. How do I hail a taxi? Do I nego­ti­ate? Do I tip? Is it safe for sin­gle females? What the heck does a taxi look like any­way? In Japan they might just have one of these cute lit­tle signs on top. (Pho­to gallery nav­i­ga­tion chal­lenge.)

Cus­tom scoot­er. No clue. No com­ment. Well, okay, maybe that he should trim the tie-ties. Equal­ly bizarre trans­la­tion of the web­site by Google here.

Pre­vi­ous­ly men­tioned here for a video of a cus­tom bike arriv­ing at a tea cer­e­mo­ny (seri­ous­ly.) This new vid of cus­tom builder Shinya Kimu­ra cap­tures the mood and atti­tude of the builder and his bikes. Pure Mon­day morn­ing inspi­ra­tion. My favorite of his bikes, for the moment. The Bar­racu­da.

Maps

Think­ing about air­space and air­space reg­u­la­tions. The ref­er­enced arti­cle is good. The pro­posed “muse­um” is intrigu­ing.

Map­ping the degree of touristy. No, I didn’t make that word up, some­one else did. Heat map of photo-tag fre­quen­cy gives you an idea how many cam­era tot­ing dweebs you are like­ly to encounter.

Art, Images, and Design

Tim Flach high­lights the exag­ger­at­ed, almost freak­ish, per­fec­tion of his sub­jects — show dogs, bats, and oth­er ani­mals. Watch the dog walk across the screen and then click on Port­fo­lio. NSFW after image #38.

Transportation

There is very lit­tle infor­ma­tion on the bike in this pic­ture but the set­ting — BBQ and the pho­tos are nice. A Ducati cafe rac­er. But which one? The paint looks real­is­ti­cal­ly, well, rough. But would some­one please aim the head­light?

Food

More cup­cakes. Cup­cakes, cup­cakes, cup­cakes. Been done to death so what can I pos­si­bly have come up with that would jus­ti­fy anoth­er post on cup­cakes? Mup­pet wed­ding cake — that’s what.

Art, Images, and Design

Any of you that have been involved in the com­mer­cial design world will remem­ber, fond­ly or not, crits. Well, here’s one you might have enjoyed par­tic­i­pat­ing in. The sum­ma­ry of couch forts as archi­tec­ture.

John Burge makes inti­mate por­traits in either water­col­or or oil. Old school paint­ing. Just like life, some images are NSFW.

Yuko Shimizu is draw­ing for Ver­ti­go (DC Comics) again, anoth­er cov­er for Unwrit­ten. This stand­alone edi­tion deliv­ers a fairy-tale world with a dark preda­tor. As usu­al her post has lots of in process scans of the work, some edi­to­r­i­al changes, and snaps of her visu­al ref­er­ence mate­r­i­al.